Archive for the ‘French cars’ tag

[Editor’s Note: Michael Taylor, who’s written about cars for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently got a chance to tour the Mullin Automotive Museum‘s Art of Bugatti exhibit before it wraps up at the end of next month and offered to share his photos and impressions of the exhibit with us.]

Walking into the Mullin Automotive Museum, one of the first things you see is a charming little motorboat, next to an equally charming horse-drawn carriage, and you realize, with a quick look around, that you have entered a shrine. Turns out it’s a celebration of all things Bugatti. And all things Bugatti is a kaleidoscope of furniture design, art, sculpture, that wooden carriage and other knick-knacks from the Art Deco era. And yes – the cars.

The cars, of course, hold center stage. The museum, in a big box of a building in Oxnard, Calif., about 50 miles west of Los Angeles, is where financial services entrepreneur Peter W. Mullin keeps some of his collection of Bugattis, Delahayes, Voisins and other gems from pre-war Europe.

Sprinkled around the vast exhibit hall are some of the other creations of the Bugatti family – that 11-foot motorboat and the horse-drawn carriage, paintings, furniture, bronze sculptures of animals, glass figurines by Lalique. The cars, in a way, seem almost incidental – some of them, like the rare Type 41 Royale and Type 57SC Atlantic, have been seen in countless car magazines or on well-publicized auction ramps and so you might think, oh that’s old hat.

Perhaps, then, the best way to work through this eclectic exhibit (it’s open to the public until March 31) is to take it by category.

The Bugatti family
Carlo Bugatti, the patriarch, was probably the original model of a Type A personality. He was a prolific designer of furniture, he hobnobbed with the elite of Italy and France, he switched from furniture to silver-smithing when he was 50; everybody said it would take decades to be an expert in silver, but he was winning awards within a year. And he had two equally Type A sons – Ettore, born in 1881, and his younger brother, Rembrandt (yes, named after that Rembrandt), born three years later. Rembrandt was a sensitive child who, by the age of 5, was modeling in clay and was casting sculptures in bronze at 14. Ettore was growing up in Rembrandt’s shadow and wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with his life, as he watched his younger sibling’s startling rise in the art world. At one point, according to Rick Eberst, the knowledgeable docent who guided me around the place for the better part of five hours, Ettore went to Rembrandt and asked him for help in becoming an artist and Rembrandt essentially told him, “no, I’m the artist. You have to find something else.”

Ettore enrolled at a prestigious art academy, but, he wrote later, found that, “Unfortunately, I was more concerned with amusing myself and besides, I had a brother who was already a sculptor. There are two types of artists. Those who are born artists – one day they create something and are ‘hooked.’ My brother was one of them. The other type, to which I belong, are those who try to create art but are not as gifted, so they have to make up for it by working hard. One day they should wake up and realize they should do something else.” At the age of 16, Ettore quit trying to be an artist and, through a family connection, got an apprentice job at a foundry, where “I began to fall in love with all things mechanical.” (The quote comes from Bugatti writings on display at the museum).

Ettore worked for various turn-of-the-century auto makers, then struck out on his own in 1909. Meanwhile, his brother, Rembrandt, who suffered from depression, spent much of his time at the Antwerp Zoo, in Belgium, using the zoo’s animals as models for his sculptures and was traumatized when the zoo, financially unable to feed all the animals, began euthanizing them. During World War I service as a hospital aide, spending days and nights with wounded soldiers made Rembrandt even more depressed and his spirits sank even lower when demand for his work ebbed. In January 1916, Rembrandt Bugatti committed suicide. He was 31 years old.

Ettore continued designing and making cars, many of them snapped up by wealthy Europeans, a few Americans and a smattering of royalty. Despite his clear success as a car maker, Bugatti was not known for his customer relations skills – when the now-famed Type 41 Royale sold poorly (the company made only six of them), Bugatti still refused to sell the car to just anybody. When the crown prince of Albania pleaded with Bugatti to sell him a Royale, according to Eberst, Bugatti said of the prince, “No! I would never sell to him. He has terrible table manners.” If customers complained about their cars’ brakes, Bugatti told them, “I don’t build cars to stop. I build cars to go fast. If you don’t like it, buy something else.”

At the height of Ettore’s success, however, the Bugatti family was struck by another tragedy. In an accident eerily reminiscent of the motorcycle fatality of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) four years earlier, Ettore’s son, Jean, the rising star of the Bugatti auto enterprise, was killed in August 1939 while testing a new car – he swerved to avoid a bicyclist and crashed into a tree. Jean was 30 years old.

The cars
If you want to find a representative collection of Bugattis, a small sample of some of the nearly 7,900 cars the firm produced until 1947, when Ettore Bugatti died, this might be a place to start. Besides the well-known Royale and the 57SC Atlantic, there are other models gracing the floor. They’re the kind of cars that, with a few deliberate exceptions, are so well taken care of that when opening the door to any of them, Eberst cradles the door handle or hood releases with a soft cloth.

Over here is the 1929 Type 46 “Semi Profile;” over in that corner is the 1908 Type 10, a tiny racing car Ettore Bugatti built in his basement, before opening up his factory in Molsheim, in the Alsace region of northeast France, near Germany.

Almost all the cars on the floor of the exhibit are in pristine condition, but there are some anomalies. Near the back wall are five unrestored Bugattis from the Schlumpf Reserve Collection. They were owned by the eccentric Schlumpf brothers (Hans and Fritz), members of a rich textile industry family in Europe. When their business started failing in the 1970s, and there was a strike at their plant in Mulhouse, France, the Schlumpf brothers fled to their native Switzerland. Over the years, their business affairs were tied up in litigation, and the brothers died before the courts finally allowed Fritz’s widow, Arlette, to keep several dozen cars that were in a reserve collection apart from the main factory. Mullin eventually bought the majority of the 62 Schlumpf cars in 2008 from the widow’s estate, sold about half of them and kept the rest. Five of them are on display and they look about the same as they did when they languished in Europe – a bit forlorn, with torn roofs, tatty upholstery and faded paint. But they are the real thing, something out of a time warp.

Lady of the Lake
The story behind this car is kind of murky, but it’s been a car legend for 80 years. The most interesting version has it that famed French racer René Dreyfus at one time owned a 1925 Type 22 “Brescia” Bugatti roadster. Around 1934 he lost it in a champagne-fueled card game to a Swiss man named Adalbert Bode, who then drove it back to Switzerland. But the car was impounded when Bode couldn’t pay the import fees. Swiss officials, reluctant to abide by an odd law requiring demolition of cars whose duties go unpaid, instead dumped it into Lake Maggiore, with the idea of retrieving it later, something they apparently forgot to do. The mystery of the car swirled around collector car circles for years. In 1967, divers discovered the roadster in 170 feet of cold Swiss water and in 2009 it was raised to the surface, power-washed to get rid of 75 years of Lake Maggiore grime, and then auctioned off. Mullin was the winning bidder. He got the car for under half a million dollars and has scrupulously kept it in its forlorn and rusty condition – it looks like it came out of the lake yesterday. If ever the overused word “patina” applied to a car, this one is it in spades.

The art
Sprinkled about the current exhibit are wonderful examples of Art Deco furniture and paintings, most of them from between the two World Wars. There are several pieces of furniture designed by Carlo Bugatti and some of the bronzes done by his son, Rembrandt Bugatti.

Tables and chairs done by Carlo Bugatti have intricately done inlays and the style on many of the pieces shows the characteristic gentle curve or, on some, a horseshoe-shaped design, much like the radiator shell on the Bugatti cars.

Perhaps the best example of Rembrandt’s work are the sculptures of panthers, one of his favorite animals. Some of the bronzes have commanded millions of dollars at auction, but like many artists from long ago (think van Gogh) it didn’t do the artist much good when his work sold for millions long after he was dead.

As for that horse-drawn carriage… on its flank, branded into the wood, is the famed Ettore Bugatti logo – “EB,” with the E reversed, so it joins the side of the B – identical to the logo you’d find on the side of a new $2.2 million Bugatti Veyron, a 253-mph car that Ettore and Jean Bugatti would probably welcome to the fold.

Mathematician and aeronautical engineer Jacques Gerin believed the very principles that made a sound aircraft would also make a sound automobile. Gambling the bulk of his family’s fortune, Gerin designed and funded the construction of an innovative streamliner that proved a bit too futuristic for the French motoring public in 1922. Next month, the Gerin Aerodyne prototype crosses the stage in Paris as part of Bonhams’s Les Grandes Marques Du Monde Au Grand Palais sale.

Though uncommon, streamlining was not unheard of in early 20th century automotive design. Camille Jenatzy’s La Jamais Content (The Never Satisfied) used its aerodynamic shape to help set a land speed record of 65.8 MPH in April of 1899, making the battery-powered streamliner the first automobile to break the 100 kilometer-per-hour barrier. The 1906 Stanley Steamer Rocket also used a wind-cheating shape to achieve a land speed record of 127.66 MPH, becoming the first car to break 200 km/h in the process.

In 1914, A.L.F.A., the forerunner of Alfa Romeo, worked with coachbuilder Castagna to construct a streamlined passenger vehicle, an odd zeppelin-like conveyance built for Italian count Marco Ricotti. Seven years later, German manufacturer Rumpler introduced its Tropfenwagen (Drop Car, named for its droplet shape), which carried up top five passengers and proved capable of attaining a 70 MPH top speed.

Whether Gerin was influenced by these earlier attempts is hard to say, but his concept of the ideal automobile relied on far more than just a slippery shape. Using experience gained with Aéroplanes Voisin, Gerin designed a stressed spaceframe to be constructed of Duralumin, with a floor of Alpax (an aluminum-silicon blend). Steel subframes would be used in front and rear for added strength, but to save weight, the bodywork would consist of an aluminum undertray and fenders combined with stretched fabric upper panels, a common practice in airplane construction of the period. The roof would be made of a heavy waxed paper, which would transmit light to give the cabin a spacious and airy feel. Construction of the Aerodyne’s frame (less the fabric bodywork) was entrusted to Paulin Ratier, whose company had experience building airframes for Voisin and Breguet.

Gerin’s design innovations didn’t stop with the body construction. His Aerodyne would use a four-wheel independent suspension of his own patented design (later licensed by Citroen for the 2CV), and the rear drum brakes would be mounted inboard to reduce unsprung weight. Front brakes were hydraulic, with four shoes per corner pressing on the inside of each wheel to reduce velocity. The sliding rack steering was another Gerin design, and the steering rake was manually adjustable to suit a driver’s preference.

The Aerodyne’s 2.0-liter, overhead-valve four-cylinder engine, mounted ahead of the driven rear wheels, was built by Janvier Sabin of Montrouge, but the car’s “variable friction drive” transmission was designed by Gerin. To ease servicing, the entire driveline was said to be removable by one man, using just two wrenches, in six minutes.

Gerin accumulated an estimated 5,500 miles on his uncovered Aerodyne, but failed to generate interest from the motoring public or automakers of the day. His ideas, perhaps, were just too far-reaching for a continent still recovering from the effects of World War I, and ultimately the Aerodyne sat, largely forgotten, for nearly nine decades. Acquired in 2012 (after a 15-year search), the prototype is said to be mostly original, with the exception of ancillary electrical wiring, a replacement steering wheel and replacement control pedals. Offered with copies of Gerin’s patents, engineering drawings, renderings of the fabric-wrapped body and its creator’s personal notes, the Aerodyne is expected to command a price between €130,000-€180,000 ($150,000-$200,000).

UPDATE (5.February): The Gerin Aerodyne prototype sold for €184,000 ($209,944).

UPDATE (12.February): The Gerin Aerodyne was acquired by the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum. Per Olivier Cerf, a thorough restoration is planned once the complete details of the car are sorted through French patent file research.

* While these days we often think of the 1953 Motorama, the first in GM’s series of showcases, in terms of the concept cars introduced there – the Corvette, the Le Sabre, the Buick XP-300, and others – it was more than that, as this King Rose Archives video shows. Fashion shows, ballet, first looks at production cars, and, yes, the dream cars.

* Alex Rosen of Los Boulevardos Car Club put together this chill video showing a typical Sunday morning cruise through Los Angeles with the club and a few of their friends. Looks like a good time. (via)

* Petrolicious’s latest video takes a look at the Caccavo family, which owns three E28 BMWs – a 1988 M5, a 1987 535is, and a 528e – all on the road and used as daily drivers, all bought for less than $10,000.

* Finally, from YouTube user automotorbgcom, a well-done documentary on the background, inception, and production life of the Renault 5, illustrating just how important this little car was to Renault and to French car buyers. (via)

The 1961 Ferrari and the 1956 Maserati from the Baillon Collection. Images courtesy Artcurial.

In the 1970s, truck manufacturer Roger Baillon fell upon hard times, and was forced to sell an automobile collection that was over two decades in the making. As Artcurial’s Matthieu Lamoure and Pierre Novikoff recently discovered, only a portion of his holdings crossed the block, while the remainder were passed down through children and grandchildren. Now, the collection’s time in the spotlight has come again, and next February the French auction firm Artcurial will be offering the remaining cars from the Baillon collection at its Retromobile sale in Paris.

The Talbot-Lago T26 Saoutchik cabriolet on the right once belonged to Egypt’s King Farouk.

To understand the significance of the collection, one must first understand a bit about Roger Baillon, the man behind it. Baillon made his fortune building truck bodies, and, later, trucks. In the postwar years, this was a particularly lucrative business, and Baillon’s design for a secure and watertight tanker earned his company, Transports Baillon, a monopoly in this segment.

A Talbot Lago T26 Grand Sport coupe.

Baillon was a dreamer, too, who designed a cab-forward truck said to be the first in France, if not the first in postwar Europe. His passions extended to automobiles as well, and in 1947 Baillon designed and constructed a car of his own, the Oiseau Bleu (Blue Bird) roadster. It’s not clear why Baillon never pursued auto manufacturing as a primary business, but in postwar Europe the automobile was a luxury that few families could afford. Trucks, on the other hand, were essential to the necessary rebuilding of European infrastructure.

Another Talbot Lago T26, perhaps in better condition.

From the early 1950s through the mid-1960s, Baillon amassed an impressive collection of European automobiles, but these were not acquired with a collector’s (or investor’s) eye. Instead, the story goes, many were purchased simply with the intent of saving them from the scrap heap. Some were restored, while others were left in an as-found state, perhaps with a future goal of preservation in mind. In 1953, Baillon acquired a property that he ultimately intended to convert into an automotive museum, but his dream was never realized.

A Hispano-Suiza H6B cabriolet, in suboptimal storage conditions.

By the 1970s, Baillon’s once-profitable manufacturing and transportation business had fallen on hard times, forcing the sale of what many believed to be his entire collection. The 50 cars sold represented less than half of his holdings, and the cars held back (or the cars that failed to sell) would today be the envy of most automotive museums. It’s not clear how Lamoure and Novikoff made contact with Baillon’s heirs, but what is clear is this: the 60-plus cars at the Baillon property have been largely untouched for decades, and the family is now ready to part with them.

Out of its garage, the Ferrari appears to be in reasonably good condition.

The photos of the find are almost too incredible to believe. A 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider, one of 37 made, sits piled high with string-wrapped bundles of the French magazine La Vie de l’Auto, parked next to a dusty and weathered Maserati A6G Gran Sport Frua, one of three built. A Facel Vega Excellence shares carport space with a Talbot Lago T26 Saoutchik cabriolet, which reportedly once belonged to Egypt’s King Farouk. The remains of a Hispano-Suiza H6B cabriolet rest in a rickety lean-to with a corrugated tin roof, supported by a tree trunk nailed to a rafter with a 1 x 4. While it’s clear that the collection may have been assembled with passion, it’s equally clear that maintaining such an assemblage of fine automobiles is now financially beyond the means of Baillon’s family.

Selling the 60-plus cars in the collection will certainly enhance the family’s finances. The Ferrari alone, once owned by French actor Alain Delon, is estimated to be worth as much as $16 million in its current state, and that’s just one of the multi-million-dollar cars in the collection. Lamoure likely isn’t exaggerating when he refers to the collection as a once-in-a-lifetime discovery; like the Lambrecht Chevrolet auction in the United States, the Baillot Collection sale will likely be spoken of among collectors for decades to come.

The Retromobile auction will take place on February 6, 2015, in Paris, France. For additional details, visit Artcurial.com.

The air in the Alsace region of France must be filled with creative ions that make car designers think different. This German-border town was home to Bugatti, creator of truly distinctive sports cars, and Mathis, one of France’s largest car companies after the Big Three—Citroen, Peugeot and Renault. To think this odd-looking three-wheeler, known as the VL333, was created back in 1942 proves just how creative and ahead of the times Mathis really was.

Imagine, if you will, this car’s shape stretched out a bit. What you would be looking at would be close to the shape of many of today’s cars. Aerodynamically, the stylists at Mathis were clearly on the right track, but unfortunately the French Government didn’t have the same vision and refused Mathis its much needed access to supplies to build the car.

In 1946, this Mathis was displayed at the Paris Auto Show, but you no longer have to travel across the Atlantic to see it up close. Today, this prototype resides in Pinellas Park, Florida, at the fascinating Tampa Bay Auto Museum. I came upon the car last month at the Lake Mirror Classic car show in Lakeland, Florida, where it was surrounded by spectators throughout the day.

According to the placard in front of the car, it stated: The VL333 is built from 20-gauge aluminum sheetmetal. “The body is welded together with nearly 6,000 weld points. There is no chassis, it is a bubble. The engine is a flat-twin 700cc, and the car is front-wheel drive with a fully independent suspension. Only 9 prototypes were made during the war from 1940 to 1945; they were hidden from the Germans, as any work on automobiles for the civilian sector was forbidden. This car is the only survivor.”

Need a pickup truck for hauling, but can’t bear to add another F-150, Silverado, Ram 1500 or Sierra to the parking lot? Does the idea of a fuel-efficient truck with front-wheel drive appeal to you? Then this 1978 Citroen HY, converted from van to pickup and for sale on Hemmings.com, may be just what you’ve been looking for. The seller is sparse on details, so it isn’t clear if this example packs the 45-horsepower HY72 four-cylinder or the 58-horsepower HY78 four-cylinder beneath its hood, but either engine sends power only to the front wheels. That helps to give the HY a low and flat bed, but at the obvious expense of towing capacity. Another selling point is the HY’s ease of maintenance; just four (large) bolts hold the entire engine, transmission and front suspension in place, which certainly saves time when major engine or transmission work is needed. From the seller’s description:

1978 Citroen H van. Multi use Vehicle, was restored in the last 5 year’s. Has been stored in covered outside storage . Has some surface rust but cosmetic only. Recent tune up and service. Brand new tires and tubes from coker tires. Runs and drives well. Located in Palm harbor FL. Please contact for any Questions or to look at H van. Clear Title.

The problem with modern life is this: for many, the pace is far too fast, from the daily commute in high-speed (or alternately, no-speed) rush hour traffic to the necessities of multi-tasking via desk phone, cell phone, email, and instant messenger, often simultaneously. What better way to enjoy a vacation, then, than behind the wheel of a vintage Citroen 2CV, a car renowned for its rugged simplicity, if not its acceleration or top speed?

All cars used are 2CV Dolly models, built between 1981 and 1989.

Thanks to a British company called 2CV Adventures, it’s now possible to participate in multi-day, back road tours of Europe (and in some cases, North Africa) behind the wheel of a restored Citroen 2CV, with 15 other like-minded individuals and the full support of a company run by John Brigden, a man with more than 15 years’ experience staging rallies and tours across the globe. The idea to form a tour company based around the 2CV came from Toby Kilner, a participant in the U.K. game show Scrapheap Challenge (which we knew here as Junkyard Wars), and in early 2014 Kilner and Brigden assembled a fleet of 16 Citroen 2CVs to begin modifying for tour use.

Why the 2CV? Though largely unknown in the United States, the 2CV has a cult following across Europe that rivals America’s former love for the Volkswagen Beetle. First envisioned in 1938 as a utilitarian vehicle that could haul two passengers plus a 110-pound sack of potatoes at a speed of 60 km/h (37 MPH), while delivering fuel consumption of less than three liters per 100 km (roughly 78 miles per gallon), the 2CV may well have revolutionized transportation in rural France, had it not been for the onset of World War II.

Despite the lack of materials and production capacity, development of the car continued throughout the war years, and in 1948 the Citroen 2CV was presented to the public at the Paris Auto Salon. Reception was mixed, with the car-buying public embracing the concept of an affordable vehicle, powered by a simple air-cooled two-cylinder engine, which could traverse everything from rutted farm fields to paved secondary roads; the motoring press, however, initially saw the 2CV as too unstylish and underpowered to be successful.

Driving a 2CV, perhaps harder than its designers intended.

They couldn’t have been more wrong, and by the time full production began in 1950, the 2CV had amassed a six-year waiting list. Domestic demand meant that export sales did not begin until 1953, after Citroen had expanded production to meet its ever-increasing orders. Production of the 2CV continued, with ongoing improvements, until the last model rolled off an assembly line in Mangualde, Portugal, in July 1990, and counting both sedan and van versions, a total of 5,114,966 2CVs were built in 42 years of continuous production. Later models wore styling that was surprisingly similar to early cars, though output from the air-cooled horizontally opposed twin (which grew in size from 375cc to 602cc over the years) ultimately jumped from nine horsepower to nearly 33 horsepower in some models.

The 2CV’s used by the company are Dolly models, and all were built between 1981 and 1989. All are powered by the 602cc air-cooled flat twin, upgraded to a high output coil and a 123 electronic ignition for improved hot starting. The carburetors have been rejetted for better performance, but output is estimated to be in the range of 26 horsepower. By modern standards, that’s not much, which is why 2CV Adventures relies on secondary roads for its tours, and for an added margin of safety, each Citroen is equipped with a six-point roll cage and door bars.

In 2015, the company plans to run five events, including the Silver Road Rally, which follows the main trading route through Spain used by Conquistadors returning from the New World; the Marrakech Express Rally, a competitive 12-day rally event in North Africa; the SAFE Raid, which runs from Spain to the UK, visiting Andorra and France in the process; the 2CV Bull Run, which begins in France and ends in Pamplona, Spain, in time to see the running of the bulls; and The French Connection, which takes participants on a week-long tour of the French countryside. There’s likely to be another Tin Snail Challenge, too, which requires blindfolded drivers to navigate an obstacle course based solely on directions from their navigator, something that most drivers wouldn’t be willing to tackle in a car with significantly higher output.

Tour costs are surprisingly reasonable for what’s included, with the nine-day Silver Road Rally priced at £3,950 ($6,320) per car for two people and the nine-day SAFE Raid priced at £3,275 ($5,240) per car. Prices include the use of the 2CV, insurance, ferry crossing (if applicable), mechanical support from an experienced rally team, rally plates, a detailed route book, a pre-programmed GPS unit (in case a co-driver’s navigational skills are lacking), hotels including breakfast and dinner, 2CV polo shirts and hats and a celebratory dinner on the final night.

The firm also rents out its fleet of UK-registered 2CVs for corporate and private events, and will work with customers to stage special events throughout Europe, based on fleet availability. As with the organized tours, group rentals include an accompanying service vehicle and spare 2CV, in case the worst happens. Company Rally Co-ordinator Finella Kilner tells us that this happened just once during the 2014 season, a further testament to the durability of the 2CV.

In Morocco, North Africa, during the 2014 Marrakech Express Rally.

There’s much to be said for an arrive and drive vacation. As company founder Kilner points out, “You don’t have to ship your own car, bring the spares, create a route, book hotels, insure the cars or look after them – we do it all for you. Anyone who’s spent time at the wheel of a 2CV will know that they are enormous fun and are the perfect antidote to the dull driving experience offered by most of today’s cars.”

Editor’s note: This summer, automotive designer Bryan Thompson (whose work has been featured on the pages of Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car) appeared on the reality television series Motor City Masters, where he finished runner up to eventual winner Camilo Pardo. When filming wrapped, Jeff Koch approached Bryan with a simple question: What cars have inspired you the most over your career? Below, in its entirety, is Bryan’s response.

When I’ve had a tough week and I finally get a day to relax and unwind there is one place I love to go. The old car junkyard. Call me weird, but I love the rusted metal, the dried out fabrics and the smells of motor oil, dirt and plastics. After I pay my dollar to get in I head straight for the area for old 1970′s cars. I poke around and I get excited if I see a rare Datsun Honey Bee, an F-10, or, mon Dieux, a Renault Cinque “Le Car!” Then I go home, euphoric and ready to take on the challenges of a new work week.

My love of old economy cars began with a neighbor’s Datsun Honey Bee. It had tiny wheels, awkward styling and a giant decal of a Bee plastered on the side. At three years old, I was in love. Later, when my parents went looking for a new car I knew exactly what they should get. I was only 8 years old but I pitched a fit until they purchased a Tercel Wagon 4WD with blue plaid seats and gigantic windows everywhere. To say I loved that car is an understatement. Many years later I was done with college and I had money from my first real job. So I spared no expense searching for my old Tercel. Not one like it, mind you. I wanted THAT specific one. I had the VIN number, searched the Internet and miraculously I found it. The guy who owned it said it was in a ditch. So I went all the way from San Diego to Idaho in the dead of winter to get it pulled out. I spent $600 for a car that some people might pay double the price to get rid of.

Economy cars from the 70s and 80s are the best. They are horrendously ugly, gorgeous and cool at the same time. If you don’t believe me rent Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit, or episodes of the old Rockford Files TV show. There’s something strangely sexy about a chrome bumper, all that metal and glass and not a single air bag. The radios and steering wheels are works of art. I lust after them. The day a neighbor I didn’t know rolled up in a 1978 Subaru was the day I became a stalker. I walked my dog Lou two blocks out of our way to see it. I took photos of it in the middle of the night and I searched until I found one just like it.

Bryan’s Tercel, post-excavation. Photo courtesy Bryan Thompson.

I may be crazy, but I am not alone. There is a growing trend and these once-disposable second-choice cars are becoming desirable. So many of them have been put to pasture over the years that they’ve become quite rare. These cars were part of the fabric of our every day lives, and they’re mostly gone now. All over the Internet, sites are popping up for these cars, and the traffic on the sites is higher than you might think. Who would have thought that there would be a sight devoted to the preservation of “vintage” Japanese cars? Apparently more than 17,000 members thought about it, according to the Japanese Nostalgic Car Forum.

It goes to show how meaningful things from our childhood are. They can grab a hold of us forever. I love rolling down the boulevard in my retro-cutom, plaid upholstered, brand new baby blue Abarth 500. The windows are down and Spotify is blasting Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love a Rainy Night,” Crystal Gayle’s “Half the Way” or that one they sang together “Just You and I.” People stare and I don’t care. I’m transported to a mobile heaven that’s found somewhere between yesterday and the future.

I challenge you to try it sometime. Go to a junkyard and find that old car from your youth. I promise that even though it’s no longer going anywhere it will move you. Depending on where you live you, here are some great cars from Japan, Europe and good ole America that have inspired me to become the car designer I am today. Let me know what you find out there!

1977 Ford Country Squire Wagon: Big beautiful bench seats. People say a lot with body language, and a relationship depends on it. While we can’t always utter the words “I’m sorry” after a disagreement, we can usually put an arm around one another as a way to rekindle the fire. A bucket seat separates people, but a bench seat brings them together. Maybe families would stay together longer, if dad could just nuzzle mom closer in the tiny intimate moments when its needed most.

1957 Plymouth Belvedere: While the ’57 Chevy is the undisputed prom queen of this era, there’s some overlooked magic in this beauty. Longer, lower, and ever so slightly more glamorous than the Chevrolet, the Belvedere is to the Chevy what Valerie Harper was to Mary Tyler Moore. In retrospect, Rhoda was the prettier one. And so it goes with the Plymouth.

Chevy Vega: Just for a minute, forget the gooey-soft aluminum engine blocks, insta-rust body panels, or the venereal disease-sounding name (thank you, John Delorean for that description) and consider just the styling: The car was well balanced, charming, and had a jaunty stance with taught, delicate surfaces, and a look-at-me profile. I’d love to have one as an art piece. Mounted on the wall. It’s not going anywhere, anyways.

JAPAN

1977 Nissan New Silvia. Photo courtesy Bryan Thompson.

1977 Nissan New Silvia / Datsun 200sx: What’s Japanese, French, and weird all over? I’ll take the heat for loving this car. I’ve been taking it all my life. But there is something so unorthodox and fresh about the styling. The proportions are uncomfortable, and the stance looks like the car is holding up its dress to tiptoe over a muddy puddle. But take a closer look, and you’ll see surfaces that are quite sophisticated and delicate. There’s some Citroen SM influence here, but it’s very much Japanese from an exploratory time, long before Camry meant “I’ve given up adrenaline for good,” or the eagerness to slip into the magic slipper of “maximum market share” saw companies amputate style in favor of sameness.

Honda Step Van: This micro box did the tall-and-tiny thing long before Soul, Cube and XB were hip to be square. Honda’s eager little go-go delivery van was ahead of it’s time, but sadly behind the curve for classic preservation. Most of now them sit, half buried in rice fields, long forgotten and silently transitioning back to their basic elements.

1984 Honda Civic Glass Back Hatch: Father of the Miata, Tom Matano, says this car deserves a place in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and that endorsement is good enough for me. From a time when Honda’s styling was as innovative and forward thinking as their engineering, that all-glass hatch was so pure, and simple, that the car is still the just as iconic as the appearance of the word Civic itself.

First-generation Mazda Miata. Photo courtesy Mazda.

1989 Mazda Miata: Speaking of Matano-san, you can’t talk about classic every-man cars without mention of Mazda’s timeless roadster. It’s just pure proportion and stance, with still more smiles-per-miles than most cars twice its price. And here’s an interesting tidbit: It was one of the last production cars to offer a circle sealed-beam headlamp. Crack a lens? No problem. Walk into any Costco, and for $4.99 your back on the track.

Renault Twingo: In terms of small cars, the Space Race was won by the French. With a micro footprint, a mono-volume profile, and a full length sliding canvas roof, sitting in the first generation Twingo felt like sky’s the limit open space. The interior volume was so huge and airy, there were actual clouds printed on the seats. I had the pleasure of driving one round trip from Paris to Montpellier. It was one of the most fun road trips I’ve ever had, and the little froggy’s four pot waited to disintegrate until we were safely back within Paris city limits. (With, I might add, a spectacularly French yelp of surrender all over Paris super-périphérique!)

Renault Rodeo 5. Photo courtesy Bryan Thompson.

Renault Rodeo 5: With styling that was less automotive and more building-on-wheels, it’s design theme could be called “Carchitecture.” But there was a modernity to its unapologetically bold graphics and its innovative use of plastics, which made for a uniquely functional truck-about. And well, ah…because France.

Citroen C-15: Baguettes not included. But you’d be forgiven for thinking they were, because the little Visa-based utility van was rarely seen without them bursting from the rear cube. This car was a true testament to longevity and cost savings. When the front end became dated, they simply covered it up with a protective plastic raccoon-style face mask, and kept churning them out for many more years. This car had that quintessentially Français “rear wheels barely touch the ground” stance, running about like a tiny chien de poche who doesn’t want to get its back feet wet.

Fiat 128: Coming or going this little car is…coming or going. With one single mold needed for the side windows, they were the same from front to rear, and side to side. This gave the car a uniquely long green house, but it pulls it off with charm because the Italians handled the rest of the body by doing why they do best: Giving it excellent stance and proportions.

Bryan Thompson is a designer and television host / media consultant. He currently lives in Los Angeles. This summer, he created the Bryan Thompson Design Scholarship with winnings from his appearances on the design TV show “Motor City Masters.” The scholarship was created to reward exceptional talent in Automotive Design, and focuses on helping LBGT design students pay for education at College for Creative Studies and Art Center College of Design. To learn more about Bryan’s work in design and television or the scholarship, please visit www.bryanthompsondesign.com

Conventional wisdom states that in order to photograph cars in a relatively unobstructed manner, one must get to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance show field early, and that duty is affectionately known as the Dawn Patrol. This year, the Hemmings staff opted to play it safe, arriving onsite sometime prior to 5:00 a.m., nearly two hours before first light and a full five and a half hours before the gates open to spectators.

Shivering through the pre-dawn chill was worth it, as we managed to capture the majority of the cars in this year’s show, and many of them will appear in upcoming issues of our magazines. Rather than make our readers wait, however, we thought it appropriate to present a gallery of images captured on this year’s Dawn Patrol.

Each of the thumbnail images below is named with the year, make and model of vehicle shown. They’re presented in chronological order, and don’t necessarily represent category winners. Instead, they’re cars that caught my eye as I made my way through the show field in the early morning light. If they have anything at all in common, it’s this: As with any vehicle displayed at Pebble Beach, each is spectacular in some manner, and a worthy candidate to represent the marque in show competition. Enjoy!

While the current attitude toward unrestored cars tends to fall on the “leave it as it is” side of the argument, it’s hard to imagine this 1960 Facel Vega HK500 for sale on Hemmings.com – a running and driving and rust-free car that has nevertheless become a little shabby over the last half-century – remaining unrestored or at the least unrefurbished and unresearched for very long. From the seller’s description:

California car from new. This car was built in December 1959, so it is a1960 Model, the car was ordered by and delivered to Agent Satori in California/USA. There are no records of who was the first owner.

The car has the three speed Torqueflite automatic transmission, power steering, disc brakes, closed Borrani steel wheels, tinted glass. original radio, Air Conditioning, complete but Ultra rare to find an unrestored unmolested Facel Vega, it is an unknown car, with 70,181 original miles.

It is being offered for sale for the first time in over 30 years, it was kept inclimate controlled Garage since August 1998, under a dust cover, Body is 100 percent rust free as is the chassis. Window go up and down fast, and even the two antenae work when the radio is turned on. It comes with it’s original tool kit, and original spare.

The car has all new fluids and all belts were changed, and now runs and drives perfectly there is a small blow by on the driver’s side exhaust and probably needs a new gasket, other than that the car is mechanically very sound. The brakes were also overhauled, to make this a fantastic driving car, that can be a daily driver, you will of course need to fit new tires for safety reasons even though they have plenty of tread. Nothing has been done to improve it’s apprerance, has flat paint, torn interior, as that would unbalance the originality the Facel.